


Tier III

by EeveebethFejvu



Category: Dishonored (Video Game)
Genre: Blood and Gore, Decapitation, Gen, High Chaos (Dishonored), Mute!Corvo - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-19
Updated: 2016-06-19
Packaged: 2018-07-16 02:26:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7248397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EeveebethFejvu/pseuds/EeveebethFejvu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Severed heads never go out of fashion. Used sparingly and with artistic sensibility, they can make a point a great deal more eloquently than those still attached.” - Joe Abercrombie, 'Red Country'</p><p>Written for Tumblr's High Chaos Week 2015. Co-winner of whales-and-witchcraft's Dishonored Head Contest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tier III

A low _whump_ roused Hiram instantly from his restless slumber.

He sat bolt upright with a gasp, clutching the silk bedsheets tightly to his chest. He stared with unblinking eyes at the dark wall of the four-poster’s enclosing curtains. His mind raced even as his body froze in distress. What had that sound been? Where had it come from? What had caused it? Barely breathing, he listened hard and waited for the sound to come again, his ears straining to hear over the loud beating of his heart.

Several minutes passed. All was quiet.

Rather than relief, Hiram only felt his uneasiness increase.

There had been so many catastrophes in the last few months, one disaster after the other, each worse than the next:  members of Parliament revolting against his authority, the tightening of the blockade, the plague spreading far beyond his tenuous control, that mutilated wretch Attano breaking out of Coldridge on the very eve of his execution.

And then, worst of all, his greatest allies had begun to disappear. Campbell had been the first to turn up missing. The High Overseer – and his incriminating little black book – had vanished from his office in Holger Square without a trace, leaving behind a handful of blood-spattered overseer bodies strewn across the floor. Initially Hiram had been incensed, certain that Campbell had turned on him and was making some sort of strange power play, going into hiding and trying to cover up his tracks with a few dead lackeys.

When those damn Pendleton twins had then disappeared from the Golden Cat in broad daylight – and the Kaldwin girl along with them – Hiram had tried to convince himself that they must be working with Campbell on this odd ruse. He had felt a strong pang of doubt, however, when faced with the bloody carnage inside the brothel. There were dead City Watch guards everywhere, flung haphazardly across filthy mattresses and slumped over balcony railings; they even found the half-eaten remains of one hired bodyguard in the steam rooms, partially submerged in water and surrounded by plump hagfish. It was easy to imagine Campbell sticking his blade in a few inconvenient overseers, but it was nearly impossible to imagine the Pendletons wrecking this sort of havoc themselves.

Later that same day, Sokolov had disappeared from his rooftop conservatory and Kaldwin’s Bridge was found absolutely littered with corpses, some with severe burns or shrapnel embedded in their faces, others with flesh rent apart by the teeth of swarming rats. There was a suspicious amount of ash peppering the streets near the Walls of Light and Arc Pylons, and Hiram found his delusions of a conspiracy concocted by his former allies quickly fading away.

Whispers of a mysterious, unseen, and bloodthirsty presence stalking the streets of Dunwall had stirred up the Tower guards into a nervous frenzy, and when his dear Lydia Boyle vanished from the very party she and her sisters were hosting, the vague rumors immediately gripped him with all the force of verified fact. The Boyle mansion had been turned into a slaughterhouse, and it had not just been the guards who had met with gruesome fates. Many of the lords and ladies who had most supported Hiram’s regime had been gutted like the most insignificant of dumb beasts. Several bodies were charred after being flung into the fireplace and several more were unidentifiable after being dumped in the cellar with the rats. Jack Ramsey’s corpse was found stuffed inside the ribs of the hollowed-out fish carcass on the buffet table, and one overseer, his music box lying broken nearby, had been slammed face-first into a plate of gelatin so hard that the force had cracked his skull through his mask.

Baffled and utterly terrified by the violent massacres, Hiram had doubled the number of guards posted around Dunwall Tower, had Walls of Light installed inside the building’s corridors, and had set several Tallboys to patrolling the trampled, desolate grounds.

Early last morning, several Tower guards stationed at the water lock had been found dead, throats slashed wide, dark pools of blood congealing beneath their mangled bodies. One was missing a hand, another part of his leg.

Hiram had cowered in his safe room all day.

By nightfall, no other violent, mysterious deaths had been reported and – to maintain a modicum of self-respect and avoid further enflaming the rampant rumors of his cowardice and inadequacy – Hiram had been forced to return to his bedchambers for the night. He had made sure to position extra guards in the surrounding rooms and corridors, however, along with two additional patrols of heavily armed overseers. 

Hiram sat in his bed, listening to the silence, and felt the blood retreat from his face. All was quiet, yes… but it was too quiet. Should there not be some sporadic sounds? Floorboards creaking under guards shifting in their stances? The occasional cough or undertone of distant banter? Soft, regular footsteps, the panting of wolfhounds, the muted, rolling whir of the music boxes? Hiram swallowed hard, trying to choke down the voices in his head screaming that something was horribly wrong. He prided himself on being a rational man, but he knew that sometimes he let his paranoia get the best of him. Surely that sound had only been a log shifting in the fireplace or maybe some heavy crate being hauled across the rooftop above. It must have been. That was the only… palatable explanation. Hiram was safe here. He had to be.

If he was going to get any more sleep tonight, however, Hiram knew he would have to prove to himself that he was, in fact, secure, protected, and alone in the room.

Slowly he pulled back the sheets and crawled awkwardly on hands and knees to the foot of the bed. Hands shaking, he reached for the curtains, steeled himself, then flung them open wide.

The room was dark. The fire had gone out sometime in the night, and Hiram realized that by banning the servants from venturing near his room as he slept, he had prevented them from keeping the blaze going. He blinked in the dim light, eyes barely able to trace the outlines of the mantelpiece, his desk, the dresser on the far wall. Perhaps he could get a guard to bring him a whale oil lamp, he thought. Something bright enough to dispel the worst of the darkness, but cool enough to still let him sleep. Hiram opened his mouth to call out – if he was guessing the time correctly, General Tobias himself should be just outside right now – but the oppressive, unbroken silence made him reconsider. Gritting his teeth, he carefully climbed out over the bed’s high footboard instead, barely holding in a shriek as the side of the storage trunk, momentarily forgotten, brushed against his leg. When both feet were finally planted firmly on the floor, Hiram paused, trying to catch his breath before making the short walk to the hallway door.

To his left, a voice broke through the silence.

_“Hiram Burrowsssss…”_

Hiram nearly pissed himself in that moment; in fact, he did, just a little, a trickle of warmth running down one leg. He was too shocked, however, to do anything else but gasp and grow rigidly still. It was a familiar voice that had spoken, deep and authoritative and almost scornful, but there was something very wrong with it, too, as if the man it belonged to were struggling to draw in breath. Regardless, it was a voice that Hiram had suspected he would never hear again.

“…Campbell?” he finally whispered uncertainly into the darkness.

A low, rasping chuckle answered. Hiram felt his heartrate increase. _“I am glaaaad youuu… recognizzzze the voicccce…”_ Campbell said. The words slurred together strangely, buzzing and crackling, almost as if he were talking through a broken speaker. But Hiram knew that he was not. Campbell was right there, somehow, right there in the room with him. _“Thisssss… would not beeeee… as sssssatisssfying… otherwisssssse…”_

“Where… where have you been… these last few months?” Hiram managed, trying to keep his own voice level and polite. He failed miserably. His fear was obvious; it coated every stuttering word. “You… just up and disappeared on me. Didn’t know… didn’t know where you’d gone.”

There was a strange low _whump_ and Hiram looked around blindly, trying to figure out what had made the sound, when suddenly another voice spoke, still to his left but closer to the fireplace.

 _“I never leffffffft… Burrowsssss…”_ To his shock, Hiram recognized the voice of one of the Pendleton twins. Custis, he guessed, thought it had always been near impossible to tell them apart, even by their voices. It too was uncomfortably distorted, garbled, as if the nobleman were trying to talk with a mouth half full of thick syrup.

“…Pendleton?” Hiram questioned. “Wha… what are you–?”

_“I have been heeeeere... all alooooong… rightttttt… underrrr your noooooose…”_

Another low _whump_ and another familiar voice, a bit closer and nearly the same in sound, possibly just a half-step higher. The other twin, Morgan.

_“…Watchiiiiing… youuuu… command thisss ccccccity… hackedddd apart… piecccccce… by… piecccccce…”_

“Now… now see here, you–”

The low _whump_ sounded again and a different voice broke the silence, almost right in front of him. _“They ssssshould have called youuuuu… the Royalll… Butcherrrr…”_

Hiram flinched, a strange mix of terror and grief overtaking him. “…Lydia?” he asked into the darkness. It had been her voice, he was sure of it, low and sultry and feminine, yet grating with that same horrible rasp as the others. There was something else wrong with her voice, however, something deeper and foreign layered just beneath the usual musicality of her tone. He had missed it in the voices of the men, but he could just hear it buried beneath hers.

It was as if… as if _two_ people were speaking at the same time.

_“Youuuuu… bassssssssssttttt… arrrrrrrrddddd…”_

Hiram’s whole body began to shake.

_Whump._

_“And noooow… I am heeeeeere…”_ said another voice, off to Hiram’s right. _“...Toooo… sssssstop you…”_ Though not as familiar as the others, Hiram still recognized the voice. He had heard it only hours ago, after all, just before retiring to bed. It was the overseer who was supposed to be patrolling around his room right now, steadily playing his music box, loyal attack hound at his side. _“Toooo… ssssilence yourrrr… Lyyyying Tongueee…”_

_Whump._

_“…Jusssssst…”_ spoke General Tobias’s strained and garbled voice to the right, “ _…as youuuuu…trieddd tooo… sssssssilenceeeee…miiiiiiiine…”_

There was a final _whump_ , a rustle of heavy cloth, a click and the odd twang of a bowstring, and suddenly the fireplace erupted in a towering blaze of wild flames and searing heat. The room was instantly lit up in a gory red-orange glow and Hiram – arms instinctually raised to protect himself from the fire – lowered his hands, his eyes searching frantically for his former allies.

He screamed.

He was surrounded on all sides by severed heads.

Campbell’s bald head was on his desk. It was propped up against the flower vase, one side half caved in with a bubbling rot, the eyes bulging and milky. Strings of ragged skin and sinew hung from the thick stump and draped over the edge of the desk like a fringe. Wet, brownish-red clumps had stained many of the documents Hiram had left scattered across its surface.

The two sculpted busts on either side of the fireplace had disappeared. Custis’s severed head now sat on the pedestal to the left, Morgan’s head on the one to the right, as matching as paired bookends. The skins of both were a wan, sickly white with dark, bruised bags beneath their unseeing eyes. There was still a faint trace of old lipstick on the edge of Custis’s jaw.

Lydia’s face was oddly serene, though paler than Hiram had ever seen her in life. Her head was propped up by a stack of books on the dresser. The severed stump was cut cleaner than the others, though the blood-speckled hair on one side of her head was a bit shorter than the other, its length sheared through by something perilously sharp along with her skin and bone.

The overseer’s head, still wearing his mask, was on the floor in a dark red puddle. It was held upright by the angle between the hallway door and the doorframe. General Tobias’s head was on the other dresser to far right, looking strangely alive still with its healthy flush. Fresh blood had expanded out across the dresser’s surface and had begun to drip over the edge in a steady _plink, plink, plink_.

Hiram screamed and screamed and screamed.

He stumbled backwards towards the bed, still screaming, and tripping over the trunk. His knees buckled, his splayed hands barely catching himself in time. He scrambled up onto the mattress, bare feet kicking wildly as he scooted himself backwards and away as fast as he could. He could not look away from those hideous heads without their bodies, those sightless and accusing eyes, those mouths that should not have been able to speak but _had._ Those mouths speaking with their breathless voices and the distant echo of a voice not their own, a low, masculine, softly-accented voice that Hiram now realized was horribly, horribly familiar.

He scooted backwards, the dark curtains shielding him on both sides, and continued to scream. His eyes were wide and burning tears ran down his bloodless cheeks. The sheets beneath him grew warm and damp with piss, and still he screamed, not for help – not for help he knew would never come – but out of sheer, mindless terror.

A rough hand clamped around his throat, silencing his scream.

Hiram felt the presence of another behind him, then, and saw the glistening edge of a long, sharp, bloodstained blade as it was pressed against the fragile skin of his neck, just beneath the line of his jaw.

The hand released his throat. As it rose to clasp his bare forehead in a steadying grip, he caught a glimpse of a strange black tattoo branded into the skin. Glimmers of ethereal, multicolored light streamed from the inky lines like candle smoke.

Caught in the hand’s terrible grasp, Hiram felt a pulse of some strange energy rattle through his skull and then that foreign voice was sounding directly in his head, unencumbered by the borrowed vocal chords of others and no longer requiring a tongue long ago severed after months of endless, unsuccessful torture.

No longer mute, Corvo Attano spoke without sound and it was the last thing Hiram ever heard.

_“Long live… the Empress.”_

**Author's Note:**

> Written May 29-30, 2015, based on the prompt "Best Use of a Severed Head." 
> 
> There are two tiers of the "Possession" ability in Dishonored: Tier I allows Corvo to possess animals, while Tier II allows him to possess humans as well. So I wondered, if there existed a Tier III of Possession, would it allow Corvo to also possess animals and human corpses, even individual body parts? Based on certain intel about the skill trees in the upcoming Dishonored 2, I may not have been too far off the mark.


End file.
